Could This Be the Sound Audiophiles Complain About with Vintage Pressings?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Red Garland Available Now

A rare and expensive (!) early stereo pressing that we played in a recent shootout for Bright and Breezy was passable at best.

As you can see from the notes reproduced below, we found the sound to be “sweet, relaxed, but badly veiled and lacking weight and bass.” (Note that records without a 1.5+ grade or better on both sides are not considered Hot Stamper pressings.)

In other words, it sounded too much like an old record, and not a very good one at that. The world is full of them. (For this album, clearly the best sound is found on the right OJC.)

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Loggins and Messina – Mother Lode

More of the Music of Loggins and Messina

  • L&M’s 1974 release comes to life on this vintage copy with solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on both sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • A surprisingly dynamic, well-recorded album – with Demo Disc quality sound – and a personal favorite from way back
  • I can’t recall another pop or rock recording that better captures both the plucked energy and the harmonic nuances of the mandolin
  • Never a band to find favor with the critics, even AllMusic had to concede that the album was “Elegantly, tastefully accomplished.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it
  • Mother Load is one of the records that helped us dramatically improve the quality of our playback, along with scores of others you can read about here on the blog.

This superb Hot Stamper pressing of L&M’s fourth release demonstrates pretty convincingly just how well-recorded this album is! The bottom end is tight and punchy, and the clarity and transparency are truly off-the-charts.

When Jim Messina rips into his mandolin solo halfway through “Be Free,” your jaw is likely to hit the ground. On the better copies, it positively leaps out of the left speaker. I can’t recall another pop or rock recording that captures either the plucked energy or the harmonic nuances of the instrument better. To hear such a well-recorded mandolin on a copy of this quality is nothing less than a thrillL.

This copy gives us full-bodied pianos; rich, lively vocals, full of presence and brimming with enthusiasm; harmonically-rich guitars, mandolins, dobros and the like, as well as a three-dimensional soundstage that reveals the space around them all.

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Shostakovich / Symphony No. 5 – Kertesz

More of the Music of Dmitri Shostakovich

  • This stunning classical release returns to the site after a four year hiatus, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this early London UK pressing
  • It’s also impossibly quiet at Mint Minus to Mint Minus Minus, a grade that practically none of our vintage classical titles – even the most well-cared-for ones – ever play at
  • The sound of the orchestra is dramatically richer and sweeter than you will hear on practically all other pressings – what else would you expect from Decca’s engineers and the Suisse Romande?
  • The sonics here are glorious, full of all of the qualities that make listening to classical music in analog so involving
  • The RCA with Mitchell has a bit more of the vintage Living Stereo Tubey Magical sound from back in the day compared to this London with Kertesz, which, although a bit more modern, is every bit as good, maybe better depending on the system playing it and the preferences of the listener

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How Did We Know Side Two Lacked Weight and Tubey Magic?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

Hearing massive sound coming out of Big Speakers in a Big Soundroom from a Prog Rock blockbuster like this was a thrill our listening panel won’t soon forget. The notes from the listing we put up for ELP’s debut tell the story.

But not the full story, since we rarely mention what was lacking or wrong with the sides that did not earn our top grade of three pluses.

Our notes below will get to that, but first, here is how we described our Shootout Winning UK copy:

Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout, this UK Island Pink Rim pressing makes the case that ELP’s debut is clearly one of the most powerful rock records ever made.

Spacious, rich and dynamic, with big bass and tremendous energy – these are just some of the things we love about Eddie Offord’s engineering work on this band’s albums.

Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live.

Side one was awesome in every respect, and the way we know that is we played a bunch of copies and nothing could beat it. This side one took top honors for having exactly the sound we described above.

Side two is another matter. We came across a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here.

When we played the two best copies back to back, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more weight to be heard in the recording than we’d noticed the first time around. Also, it turns out that this side two was a little bright compared to the very best.

When comparing your own pressings of the album, consider listening for these qualities yourself.

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The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Our Discontinued Four Plus Grade

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rimsky-Korsakov Available Now

Many years ago we played a copy with an AMAZING side one. It was so good we gave it our rare 4+ grade. We freaked out when we heard this side – it took the sound beyond anything we had ever experienced for the work.

It’s so rich and real, with huge WHOMP factor down low, as well as clear, uncolored brass and robust lower strings – wow!

We figure about one out of a hundred sides earn our Four Plus grade – you can’t get much more rare than that.

UPDATE 2026

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and what it takes to discover them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it changes our appreciation of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question might have been “How high is up?”

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Thick as a Brick Marked a Milestone in 2007

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Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Until about 2007, Thick as a Brick was the undiscovered gem (by me anyway) in the Tull catalog. The pressings we’d heard up until then were nothing special, and of course the average pressing of this album is exactly that: no great shakes.

With the advent of better record cleaning fluids and much better tables, phono stages, room treatments and the like — taking full advantage of the remarkable number of revolutions in audio that have occurred over the last two or three decades –some copies of Thick As A Brick have shown themselves to be truly amazing sounding. Even the All Music Guide could hear how well-engineered the album was.

Marking Two Milestones from the Past

The 2007 commentary you see below discusses the pros and cons of both the British and Domestic original pressings. With continuing improvements to the system, room, etc., it would not be long before we realized that the British pressings were simply not competitive with the best domestic ones.

You might say this record helped us mark two important milestones in the developing history of Better Records.

The first, around 2007, was recognized by the fact that we had improved our playback to a very high level, one high enough to reproduce the album with all the clarity, size and energy we were shocked to hear at the time.

The second milestone would result from the audio changes we continued to make for the next couple of years, from 2007 to 2010, which allowed us to recognize that the best British pressings, as good as they might be, were not in the same league as the best domestic ones. We broke down in detail exactly what we were listening for and what were hearing in this commentary, and the Brits were clearly not cutting it at the highest levels by 2010.

If you find yourself with one of more British copies of the album that you think have superior sound — any copies of the album, really — we would love to send you one of our Hot Stampers so you can hear what you are missing.

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Various Artists – Musique de la Grèce Antique / Musicae de Madrid / Paniagua

More Classical and Orchestral Recordings

  • With two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this original Harmonia Mundi France import pressing will be very hard to beat – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Spacious, rich and smooth (particularly on side two) – only vintage analog seems capable of reproducing all three of these qualities without sacrificing resolution, staging, imaging or presence
  • So transparent, dynamic and real, this copy raises the bar for the sound of this kind of unique music on vinyl (also particularly on side two)
  • “Perhaps [Atrium Musicae de Madrid]’s most famous recording is Musique de la Grèce Antique (Music of Ancient Greece), in which they performed ancient Greek music carefully taken from scattered extant fragments of papyrus. Performing the ancient compositions also meant they had to reconstruct an arsenal of ancient instruments. This ancient music was an important aspect of the group’s live performances during a series of acclaimed international tours.” – oldmusicbook.wordpress.com
  • “Utilizing a small chorus of six and a battery of instruments, [Paniagua] creates a fascinating landscape of sound, with thunderous breaks of fragmented melody and shards of recited and sung poetry breaking up periods of silence.”

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Letter of the Week – “I will close with my wife Jan’s words ringing in my ears – ‘worth every penny!'”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music Al Stewart Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing he purchased recently:

Hi Tom,

Well, I said that I would report back to you when I had listened to “Past, Present and Future,” and listen to it I did on Saturday evening.

Now, I have been listening to my copy of this record since it was released in 1973 and, I would say, that it is one of those rare records that sounds better every time I make an upgrade to my audio system (currently this is all vacuum tube – phono amp, pre-amp and power amps) – unlike some seemingly great sounding records that actually sound worse.

So, how do these two records compare? Well, when I played the “new” record, with great trepidation I might add, I noticed that the opening twenty seconds or so that feature the guitars were ever so slightly leaner sounding than my original copy. But once the record got going, the sound of the “new” record opened up more that my original; the soundstage was bigger – slightly wider and deeper and, instrument and vocal placement were more tangible.

Dare I say that the dreaded compression was absent – something that even my original has a little of. Vocals on both were very strong but pretty inseparable.

I should state here and now, that I am a “soundqualityaholic” – I have records that I love to bits but don’t play because they sound so bad – “Silver Machine” by Hawkwind on a 12 inch single, springs to mind. And, Thomas by name, doubting by nature, although I understand and agree with your philosophy, I was very doubtful that the “new” copy of “Past, Present and Future” would better my original but, I was wrong. In fact, if I had to score these two records on sound quality, I would score my original at 90% and the “new” record at 95%.

Anyway, that’s about the size of it, as we say on this side if the “Pond”. So, I will close with my wife Jan’s words ringing in my ears – “worth every penny!” she said.

Best regards

Tom

Dear Tom,

The copy of Past Present you bought was $150 plus shipping. Can a five percent improvement in sound really be worth the roughly $200 you paid?

We love the idea that our pressing earned a 95% rating. It was a White Hot Shootout Winner, so 95 out of 100 seems to be about right. Could we find a copy that was 5% better than the best one we found last year? Of course we could.

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When I Wrote this Years Ago I Was Being Far Too Charitable

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Chet Atkins Available Now

It’s been quite a while since I played the Classic pressing, but I remember it as nothing special. Like a lot of the records put out by this label, it’s tonally fine but low-rez and lacking space, warmth and, above all, Tubey Magic.

When I wrote that years ago I was being far too charitable.

A remastered pressing of a Chet Atkins recording from 1959 that lacks Tubey Magic is one that is failing fundamentally to understand why it has any reason to exist.

The premise of the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing, as its legions of defenders constantly remind us, is to allow the listener to hear the music as it was meant to be heard — on better vinyl, at affordable, non-collector prices as an added bonus.

(The dirty little secret of the mid-fi collector market is that affordability, not sound quality, is at the heart of it. The knock on our records is that they are expensive, but how is that relevant to the sound quality of the pressings we offer? A better sounding pressing is a better sound pressing, regardless of its price.)

These newly remastered pressings are meant to offer the music lover the opportunity to hear the true sound of the master tape. This elusive holy grail they will stop at nothing to acquire can be summed up in three words: Master Tape Sound. Or so they think.

(The fact that vanishingly few audiophiles have ever heard a master tape or would even know what one sounds like is an inconvenient truth that must not be allowed to interfere with their righteous desire to own whatever pressing purports to offer it.)

But I digress. Back to Chet Atkins in 1959. Let me sum up my position this way, with a nod to the Brits:

A Living Stereo recording that lacks Tubey Magic is one that has completely lost the plot.

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The Prelude Cleaning System – Always in Stock

Proper Record Cleaning Can Help You Find Your Own Hot Stamper Pressings

Better Records is now the exclusive distributor for The Prelude Record Cleaning System (formerly produced by Walker Audio).

Prelude is the only fluid we recommend for serious sound enhancement and cleaning of your LPs.

It is our strongly held belief that you have never really heard what’s in the grooves of your records until you’ve cleaned them using Prelude’s enzyme-based system. There is nothing in our experience that works as well.

The Prelude Record Cleaning System can be used with any vacuum record cleaning machine.

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